At my recent workshop at the Miami Wolfsonian Museum, I taught the students about live area, how to lay out a page, and how to hand-letter. This first batch of short videos discuss and demonstrate live area, original size, laying out a page, and laying out tiers.

A great way to introduce people to the world of comics is to make a “jam comic” —an improvised collaborative comic. In addition to being a relaxed introduction to creating comics, jam comics are a great warm-up activity and icebreaker.

We finally had enough work done that we started to get finished projects up on the blog! Most students finished their pictureless comics, scanned them, cleaned them up, and posted them. It’s a pretty great-looking bunch of pages, so check them out.

This week’s main project: a one sheet micro-mini utilizing a real location in Miami Beach. We figured out the proportions for a 150% larger original size, and the students laid out 8 pages in their sketchbooks, and went out drawing with Caiphus in the afternoon.

I’m designing a whole new curriculum, which, though based on others I’ve done, still poses a lot of interesting new questions and problems. I thought I’d throw it out here as I go and see if anyone has any ideas about what I’m planning. I’ll continue to post updates as I develop this workshop, and I plan to blog it while in Miami Beach in late June.

We didn’t have this blog back in 2008 when we taught an intensive workshop at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), so we’re taking this opportunity to catch up with some students from that program.

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